WRAL Sports Fan

Wolfpack improving, but still a work in progress

By Ken Medlin
Feb 17, 2012

NC State is still searching.

The signature win the Wolfpack needs so dearly to improve its NCAA Tournament chances continues to elude this team.
Indiana nearly fit the bill. Ditto that for Duke. But late-minute comebacks by both teams spoiled golden opportunities for Mark Gottfried’s team.

Still – if you look at the big picture – more things are going right for the Wolfpack than wrong. This is clearly a better team than we’ve seen at State in recent years. They play with purpose and passion, and they can hang with just about anyone on a given night. Just ask Duke, Indiana and Syracuse.
And the tournament is still quite reachable. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has the Pack in his February 17 bracket projection, albeit as a 12-seed as one of the last four teams.

That’s still better than we’ve seen in six years, and there will be more chances for signature wins in the coming weeks.

The Duke loss stings in West Raleigh. It should. And, as Jason Jennings notes, this is yet another heartbreak in a quarter century of frustration.

But think about adding three McDonald’s All-Americans to this nucleus – a nucleus that dominated Duke for 30 minutes. Things are getting better for State, even with the growing pains that come with a difficult loss.